The Sinner (22 page)

With a hysterical laugh, she began by hugging her stomach protectively. "No need to soft-soap me. I know what you're after
- you want to get at these."

Abruptly, she extended both arms in his direction. "Go on, help
yourself. See if you can find a vein. Like to take a blood sample
too? You'd better - you'll only regret it later. Who knows what was
in that lake water I swallowed today."

After tapping her forearms for a while, the doctor opted for the
back of her hand. He muttered something about skin like leather,
scar tissue, and the fact that he'd never seen such craters.

Although Grovian overheard this, he was too relieved by her
reaction to draw any immediate conclusions. Half an hour later he
was facing her aunt across a desk.

Margret Rosch had found it hard to persevere in the face of
something she would rather not have known about. Unwilling to
take no for an answer, tempting though it was, she'd tried again
and again until she was finally put through.

She insisted on seeing her niece, but Grovian put her off. Cora
Bender was lying down in an adjacent room. The doctor was
still with her, together with Berrenrath, whose presence she had
requested. "One of you will have to guard me, I suppose. Would
you be kind enough to take on the job? Compared to the rest of
this bunch, you seem positively human."

Werner Hoss had brewed some more coffee. Grovian, taking two
cups with him, ushered Margret Rosch into an interview room.
She made a dismayed but resolute impression. A buxom, attractive
woman in her mid fifties, she was of medium height and had
luxuriant hair of the same auburn shade as her niece's. Her face
also displayed a family resemblance.

Her response to Grovian's first and most important question
whether her niece had ever displayed any signs of mental
derangement - was a vigorous shake of the head. Before giving
him any further information, she demanded to be put in the
picture herself.

There was no reason to make a secret of the facts, so he outlined
the circumstances of the case. She heard him out, frozen-faced,
before proceeding to answer his questions.

The name Georg Frankenberg meant nothing to her. Horsti and
Frankie elicited a shrug, nothing more, butJohnny she'd heard of
Cora had mentioned him on one occasion, likening him to the
archangel that drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise. `And the eyes
of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked."

His friend called him Billy-Goat, thought Grovian. He was
Satan, who had led the woman into temptation by means of the
serpent. And then came the tiger with its paws of crystal.

It sounded mad, naturally, but he'd seen the scar and the dent in
her skull with his own eyes. And she'd also said something about
an ashtray. It didn't take a lot of imagination to visualize what had
happened in that cellar, and it was likely that anyone who had had
to camouflage a Saturday night disco as the eye of God would also
clothe a dire experience in biblical quotations.

Cora's aunt could not recall her mentioning a Johnny Guitar,
nor did she know when Cora had made his acquaintance or what
their relationship had been, but she indirectly confirmed her niece's
statements, rambling and intelligible alike.

In May five years ago her brother Wilhelm had called her. He
was worried about his daughter, he said, and suspected that she
had got into bad company.

"I didn't take him too seriously," said Margret Rosch. "In a
household where a television set is the work of the devil, any young
man is bad company."

But her brother's fears were not as groundless as she thought.
That August, Cora disappeared. For three months she seemed
to have vanished from the face of the earth. Then, in November,
Wilhelm received a call from a doctor.

According to this doctor, Cora had been found lying beside a
road some weeks earlier. She had been badly knocked about and
was unconscious. Later she claimed to have thrown herself in front
of a car. However, the doctor surmised from the nature of her
injuries that she had been thrown from a car on the move.

Grovian was feeling rather relieved. The rest of what Margret
Rosch told him also fitted the picture. She spoke of a trauma.
Whatever had been done to her niece, Cora couldn't bring herself
to talk about it. So the suicide attempt could be consigned to the
realm of fantasy - the pregnancy too, in all probability. He sought
confirmation on this point. "Your niece has repeatedly claimed to
have killed an innocent child."

Margret Rosch gave a nervous laugh. "She most certainly hasn't.
She's never had a child."

"I was thinking more of a pregnancy," he said.

'An abortion, you mean?" Margret Rosch shook her head. "I
can't imagine it, not in Cora's case."

"It may have been a miscarriage," he said. "That wouldn't be
surprising if she was knocked about. Do you know the name of the
doctor who treated your niece at the time?"

"No, nor do I know what hospital looked after her."

"She says she wasn't in a hospital."

"She says!" Margret Rosch broke in. "It's no use asking Cora about
this business, she's in denial. Do you know what a trauma is?"

He nodded, thinking of the wall in the brain his questions had
demolished.

"Good," she said, "then consult your common sense. I know a
lot of doctors, caring doctors, but none that would pick up a badly
injured girl lying unconscious by the roadside and take her home
with him. That would be irresponsible. I've no idea why she told
you that story. Maybe she wishes there had been such a person
- someone who would really be there for her. She always was a bit
of a loner."

That sounded logical. He hadn't forgotten the doctor's remark
about the needle marks in her arms. Next question: "Did your
niece ever do drugs?"

Several seconds went by before Margret Rosch gave a reluctant
nod. "Yes, heroin, but not for long. It must have been around that
time. I assume Johnny administered it to make her compliant. She
certainly didn't shoot up herself - she didn't know how to handle
the stuff."

She sighed. "She was in a wretched state when she came to me.
She thought it was withdrawal symptoms, but that had nothing to
do with it. Terrible nightmares, she had, and always just before two
in the morning - you could have set your clock by them. I used to
give her sleeping pills, but they might as well have been candies. At
five to two, on the dot, she would be sitting on the couch, lashing
out with her fists and yelling at the top of her voice: `Stop it! Stop
it, you swine!' She wasn't awake and I couldn't rouse her. If I spoke
to her, she would mumble something about a cellar - about worms
and tigers and goats."

Listening intently, Rudolf Grovian felt easier in his mind. He
hadn't mentioned the names Billy-Goat and Tiger. It was one thing
to torment a young woman with his questions but quite another to
goad her into remembering things that could ultimately provide
her with a motive.

"I urged her more than once to consult a doctor," Margret Rosch
went on, "but she refused, and I didn't want to bully her into it. She
was badly in need of help, though, so I ended by dosing her food with
tranquillizers. Her condition improved after a couple of months. The
nightmares petered out, and she recovered physically as well."

She lapsed into silence for a moment or two. Then: "You won't
tell Cora what I've just said, will you? If you tell her I told you
about the heroin, she'll slam the door in your face, believe me.
To her, keeping it under wraps is the most important thing in the
world. It would be best not to mention it at all. Anyway, there's no
point in bringing it up again after all this time. Cora must already
have told you a lot of things - how the whole thing began, no
doubt. It seems Johnny didn't behave like an animal right away.
Maybe I can get her to tell you something about the end of the
affair. I don't know how much she remembers, if anything at all,
but it's worth a try. Will you let me have a word with her?"

"Yes, in due course," said Grovian. He inched his way slowly
towards the subject of Cora's childhood and parental home. All he
wanted was confirmation of the mother's religious mania and the
father's failure to resist it. And also, perhaps, of what was lurking
at the back of his mind. Child abuse?

But he had scarcely begun asking about Cora's childhood when
her aunt underwent a strange transformation. Her initial eagerness
to be communicative vanished.

"I can't tell you much. I had very little contact with my brother's
family, mainly because I couldn't stand my sister-in-law's insane
goings-on. Cora made a normal impression on me whenever I
came to visit. Her mother didn't allow her much freedom, but she
managed to get her way despite this. Many a child would have
snapped under such constant pressure, but Cora ... How can I
put it? She thrived on it. She was always very mature for her age,
very sensible and responsible. She took over some of the household
chores at an early age, not because she was asked to, but because
she saw that her mother couldn't cope. You could say she assumed
the role of an adult."

And what of her role in the marriage bed? All the typical signs
were there. Bed-wetting at the age of nine, heroin at nineteen!
Sexually abused children often ended that way, Margret knew,
but Wilhelm had always been a decent fellow That she also knew,
and now he was an old man, worn out and tired of his miserable
existence. He called her occasionally. "How's Cora?" he would ask,
and was always delighted when she replied: "She's fine."

Margret Rosch had been sitting with Rudolf Grovian for nearly an
hour. She was obviously disconcerted by what had happened. That
apart, she revealed nothing of what was going through her head.
She didn't even mention Magdalena's name.

"Now may I see my niece?" she asked at length.

He rose. "I'll go and see how my colleagues are getting on."

His colleagues were standing around in the passage. He only
wanted to check on Cora Bender's condition. She was sitting up
straight again when lie entered the office. Berrenrath was standing
beside the window in conversation with the doctor, and the latter's
expression involuntarily reminded him of Winfried Meilhofer's
reference to an avenging angel.

He must have got the relevant impression: the police and their
brutal interrogation methods, an unconscious young woman with
a battered face.

"Your aunt would like to see you, Frau Bender," Grovian said.

Her fixed stare seemed to bore into his brain.

"This woman needs rest," the doctor protested.

"Nonsense," she said. "You said that jab would perk me up, and
it has. I've never felt wider awake in my life." She looked up at
Grovian. "What has she been telling you?"

"I'll go and get her," was all he said.

He returned two minutes later with Margret Rosch at his heels.
Gesturing to Berrenrath and the doctor to leave, he lingered in the
background but watched and listened in silence. Margret Rosch
remained standing in the middle of the room. He saw the fear on
Cora Bender's face, heard the strain in her hoarse voice.

"What have you been telling him?"

"Nothing," her aunt lied. "Don't worry, I only came to see you.
A shame you won't be paying me a visit tomorrow; I was looking
forward to it. How's the little boy?"

She spoke as if she were visiting someone confined to bed with
a broken leg, but Cora Bender's suspicions weren't to be allayed
so easily.

"Fine. Have you really told him nothing?"

"Of course not. What's to tell?"

"How would I know? People talk a lot of nonsense in a situation
like this. I did so myself - I blathered about the Saviour, Mary
Magdalene and all that rubbish."

Margret Rosch shook her head. "No, I haven't said a word."

Cora Bender seemed relieved. She subsided a little and changed
the subject. Grovian couldn't tell whether she was really appeased
or pursuing some definite objective. She seemed genuinely
concerned, just as she had at the lake that afternoon. Berrenrath
had reported that she was worried about her son's ears.